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Puck is a weekly webcomic that, in the words of one fan, is "mostly irreverent humor concerning a pretty girl with freckles and a hot she-devil who wears fan-service costumes." Surreal fantasy slice-of-life crazy-type stuff about the world's funniest redhead! Updates Tuesday.

Puck 482

Back in February of 2015, I declared the month ‘Phoebruary’ and ran a retrospective of a bunch of voting incentive images featuring our beloved Phoebe. Well, years have passed, and I’ve got many more images to explore, so get ready! Every few days I’ll pop another Phoebruary image up – now with post-it note commentary! Try not to miss a one! This week it’ll be all Valentine’s Day stuff, so we’re even in season!

I realize now that framing a comic with a blind character is a little challenging in terms of visuals. One of the most important points of expression for a comic character is eye direction: it tells the reader about the character’s point of focus AND the character’s attitude. See Tyler’s side eye in panel two, or Daphne’s flippant eye roll in panel three. Blind people, though, don’t do that. The pupils tend to remain relatively neutral in placement. That’s … difficult to work with in a comic where you have only four tight panels and a lot of the storytelling relies on visual shorthand. Oh well. Guess I’ll do what I can.

Discussion (59) ¬

To no-one’s surprise, Daphne does not seem to have thought this through: She struck a pretty good pose in panel 2 but in panel 3 tried lying to someone who grew up with her. Total fail.
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Hannah’s eyebrows should get extra points for doing the expressive work eyes and pointed ears both.

I suspect, because Tyler is a nice, considerate guy, he knows that people who are blind or otherwise disabled for a long period of time (ie, most of their lives), have developed a degree of independence, and don’t really like it when other people come in act like they are helpless who can’t do anything.
Tyler is staying close to allow her to choose to use him for support if necessary, and she is probably using his proximity and movement as a guide anyway, they do seem to be almost touching, and Hannah probably has slightly heightened senses of touch and hearing.
That said, given the occasion, it would not be unusual for a couple to be holding arms.

My primary experience with a blind person comes from my childhood friend’s mother. I never saw anyone leading her around by her arm. I think many blind people don’t like that sort of help and would rather get there on their own, but Tyler might have helped her on the way over. I dunno.

Its been my experience that once you start digging your own grave, despite the small inner voice screaming at you to stop! desist! cease! QUIT!!! RUN AWAY!!!!, you find you just just can’t stop going deeper and deeper into the manure.

I think it’s good that Hannah has the appropriate facial expressions for a blind person. Wouldn’t make sense otherwise. Given that, panel 1 doesn’t really make sense, because Hannah would have no idea which direction Daphne is in. Panel 2 makes more sense, because after Daphne spoke, Hannah would know where she is. Given that, I suspect that in panel 4 Hannah is hiding behind Tyler. Because Daphne is scary and you don’t need to be able to see to know WHY Daphne is there, and why Hannah is scared that Daphne showed up.
Tyler’s look in panel 4… I bet he is realising the irony of the situation

I used to be friends with a guy who was legally blind (we lost contact after he moved). Whenever I said something, his eyes would go towards the direction of my voice, even if he couldn’t actually *see* me. I recall asking him about it at one point and he replied with something among the lines of “[He] figured it’d make sense, even if [he] can’t see [me], [he] assumed that’s what people that can see does.”
…I had no argument to it and let him continue with it.

In regards to the comic, I did love how Phoebe goes from “Okay, doing some damage control…” to “AAAAAAAAAND we just blew it”.
As for Tyler, I for some reason imagine Tyler asking Hannah out, she asks him why he didn’t go with Daphne and he just said something vague like “She hates those types of events” or something like that.
It sounds about right, given what she says.

With regards to the hover text. I particularly like Einstein’s explanation of relativity for the layman. “When you spend 2 hours with a beautiful woman and it seems like 2 minutes, but you put your hand of a hot stove for 2 minutes and it seems like 2 hours, THAT’S relativity.”

I add, I voted for Puck and saw today’s picture of Phoebe. Two remarks. One, very well done. Two, Phoebe . . . I have no idea where it is and I wouldn’t count on anybody besides Puck telling you where to find it. Frankly, I can’t imagine it could make your current whatever (if people want to know what they can go vote) any more impressive.

‘Prom’ is seldom preceded by ‘the’ in common parlance. Not anymore, at least. You would say, “I’m going to the dance,” but no ‘the’ for prom. It’s partially due to the fact that there is only ever one prom at a school (at least for any given grade), so it stands as this monolithic singular cultural event that needs no definite article to clarify it. So just like one would not say, “I’m going to the Mardi Gras,” one would not say, “I’m going to the prom.”

Just glancing at some American sites concerning prom, I have concluded that ‘prom’ (no ‘the’) is not just a Canadian thing, but a standard use nowadays. Check this out: http://promsie.com/homecoming-vs-prom-differences-that-you-really-need-to-know/ ‘Homecoming’ (which is NOT a Canadian thing and doesn’t really exist up here) seems to have gone the same direction in terms of its usage. It is technically ‘the homecoming dance’ but American kids tend to talk about it merely as ‘homecoming’. Prom used to be a cute short form of ‘the promenade dance’ but kids don’t know that anymore. Now’s it’s just ‘prom’. The article I linked to uses ‘prom’ without the ‘the’ almost exclusively. And given the teen girl vibe of the site, I think they’re up on the lingo. (I particularly like the featured articles on how to apply duct tape to certain parts of your body to get the best look out of your dress.)